Two big scam articles have hit the press. They are about graduate education and not law school as much, but it still shows how widespread the mistaken policy of unlimited and unregulated student loan spigotting (and the academic leeches taking advantage of it) have spread.
The first one is unbelievable:
She exacerbated her situation by deciding to have a "baby makes two" family in the midst of total debt servitude. There's a bit of "Slut Scam" to this one, where a girl puts out to Alpha-dude/future deadbeat dad, gets knocked up, and the "playa" disappears, and now we are all paying for the illigitimeeto and Baby Momma. Why a single mother decided that society had a great need for Medieval Historians with 'degrees' from an unknown school is unsaid, but we are all paying for her 'education'. Both she and society have been made the worse, but the school got its Danegeld. Society somehow got stuck paying for this disaster.
'I Fully Expect to Die With This Debt' Baby boomers who went back for graduate degrees struggle to pay back their student loans
The anti-Boomers will love this one. A taste of their own medicine, they will say. Girl looks prematurely aged from the crushing debt and broken promises. The credentialing-and-get-super-job-through-loans scam seems to have Medusa'd her pretty good and turned her into stone. The article mentions several other students who started grad school at an advanced age, which makes their decision (and the money given from the taxpayers due to mistaken student loan policy) even more absurd, and the scam on them more ridiculous. Going to long-term grad school at age 58? Did you really think people would hire you as an entry-level guy who is almost at retirement age?
These totally unsuitable students and "Ph.D. Candidates" just show that they were accepted in order to get that federal loan money, not because anyone wanted, needed, or even otherwise considered "educating" them in some silly over-saturated subject.
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While I certainly have my anti-Boomer moments (as a Gen-Xer, I've had to work for them my entire life and roll my eyes and put up with their arbitrary, capricious, blame-filled, know-it-all smugness), this situation is just wrong.
ReplyDelete"Among borrowers ages 50 to 70 struggling with graduate-school debt are those who say they lost jobs in government, law, information technology, and the automobile industry during the recession. Others, wanting to earn more money, tried to reinvent themselves for the new economy in fields like health-care administration and nursing. Some wanted to earn more credentials to advance in their fields."
Boy, I resemble that remark, as the smiling BoomerDeans took my student loan money. The fact that Boomer policies are now coming back to bite the Boomers themselves is a real problem for everybody. Why, yes, you actually did indeed "start the fire," but now the wind has shifted and the blaze is threatening you too so it's all different now, all of a sudden. All of the Boomers who comment random things like "Damn kids get a job blah blah blah pay your loans blah blah blah don't be a deadbeat blah blah blah GRRRRAAAAHHHHWHITEBOOOMERRAGE!!111!!111!!1!!" are going to be having second thoughts as the economy bitchslaps them, too.
Sigh. While I would like to feel tons and tons of schadenfreude, what I really feel is more sorrow and compassion over this. It's going to get worse before it gets better, and we all need to wake up, recognize the brokenness of the system, and try to fix it. There will be some Boomer hold-outs who still "know everything" and would rather die before admitting that things aren't working, but many more are going to "see the light," sadly.
'slut scam'? Really now? I mean, if you want to cut your potential audience here by half, sure dude, keep talking that way.
ReplyDeleteMore generally, I'm not sure what judgments of who should and shouldn't have children have to do with the scam - personally I think you'd have to be either very wealthy or insane to wilfully create a child right now but it's telling that people only tend to pass judgment on the topic when they're talking about women. Male law grads with kids don't invite that judgement. That makes it a pretty loaded conversation topic.
Yeah. I agree. The personal diatribes on ethics and lifestyles do not do a good service to the scamblogger movement. Keep it clean.
DeleteWas the paragraph about the Slut Scam poorly executed satire? If so, I did not understand. If not, what are you talking about? As someone who has worked with a lot of social services departments and recipients, I assure you that even the people "gaming" the system rarely receive much reward outside of basic food and maybe rent assistance in the ghetto.
DeleteBut this is part of the education scam problem...it dissuades people from having children due to financial instability, and it causes existing children to live in long term poverty.
Yeah. Vulgar satire. Just needs to be a notch less gritty.
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DeleteSo the consensus here is that a woman has no share of responsibility for having unprotected sex out of wedlock, and then dumping the expenses for the resulting kid on the government? What are you guys trying to say?
You can't figure it out?
DeleteMorris - if this is about 'responsibility', why do we never see struggling male law grads who've fathered children referred to as sluts on this blog? Preston Bell didn't call her a slut because of 'responsibility'; he called her a slut because she's a woman. That does not make me feel a whole lot of solidarity towards Preston Bell.
DeleteCome on guys. Enough with the "boomer" this and "boomer" that. It's getting tedious AND does nothing to fix your problems.
ReplyDeleteThe boomers are also your parents, and many of them are in bad situations because it's cost a heck of a lot to bring you up (how many of you expected this, that and the other without ever asking if mom and dad could afford it); because many of them were also helping their own parents; because many of them have been hit throughout their working lives by the things you talk about now as if they were new: outsourcing, the problems of the middle class, etc. The boomers have also paid a hell of a lot of taxes over their lives.
Many of them found at mid-life that their corporate pensions were involuntarily converted to individual accounts, which may or may not have done well. By definition, not every person is going to fare well in investments because there is a losing side for each winner and most people are not investment experts.
You will find this out yourselves over the course of a life.
Contrary to the fantasies I often see in such discussions, the boomers did not come out into a world of job magic, where you just walked out of college, into a fabulous job, and it was all upward and onward from there. The boomers came out into a crowded labor market (because there were so many of them) and because many jobs were opening up to women and minorities, it made it harder for each person as an individual. They have had huge competition throughout life as a result at every level.
Among the older boomers, the guys got drafted and shipped off in huge numbers to SE Asia, and tens of thousands of them got killed. Body counts by the hundreds in many weeks. I don't think your generation is facing this (folks who went to Iraq etc. were volunteers). Go back and look at the history books: the race riots and political assassinations that gripped the country during the boomers' youth.
Every generation has problems. Yours is not the first.
There were also plenty of nasty recessions in the late 1970s and early 1980s ... and if you think interest rates are high now, take a look at what they were under Paul Volcker. In the early 80s, there were points when interest rates were above 20%, inflation was in the teens and unemployment was 10% or more. You are not the first to face tough economic times.
Yeah, you have more debt. Got it. Many of you also have 40 or more years until you retire.
The "shitboomers" is a satisfying meme, I know. But it's getting boring as an excuse for wallowing in misery.
^Dumb boomer reasoning. "Oh, interest rates were turrible, Jimmy Carter, Vietnam." Shut the fuck up.
Delete(Also, this: "By definition, not every person is going to fare well in investments because there is a losing side for each winner and most people are not investment experts." is so completely false and so economically stupid I can't possibly reason with this person on a point-by-point rebuttal)
Blaming Boomers for the past is water under the bridge. Let's look to the future... funding their social security benefits.
DeleteThe big difference is that the legal profession was not grossly oversupplied with lawyers in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s and the higher paying jobs were spread out among many larger, midsized and some small law firms. There was more age balance in the legal profession - not so much armies of high paid young associates and relatively few 10+ year lawyers earning a lot of money, as is the case today. Fewer lawyers were in house. Lawyers who lost jobs had a better chance of recovery than now. Government and in house were hiring and it was possible for many lawyers who cannot touch a legal job to get good paid work as a lawyer or failing that a paralegal or similar job where legal skills helped.
ReplyDeleteNow most law graduates are screwed - unemployed or underemployed - and the boomer lawyers are getting screwed along with everyone else.
Sorry guys/gals, I know this is off topic, but check this out, it is probably the best "job posting" I have seen. NOTE TO ALL LAW STUDENTS: THIS IS YOUR FUTURE!
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Deletethank you for posting these. even though i am not affected by the higher education scam, reading these articles allows me to get the right perspective on life and not put on rose-colored glasses.
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